Welcome to Lily Belli on Food, a weekly food-focused newsletter from Lookout’s food and drink correspondent, Lily Belli. Keep reading for the latest local food news for Santa Cruz County – plus a few fun odds and ends from my own life and around the web.
… I’m happy to share that Lookout’s Santa Cruz County pizza guide was published last week, along with a companion piece on the best non-pizza dishes at pizza restaurants throughout the county.
This project was such a pleasure to work on, and not just because of the amount of pizza I got to enjoy in the name of research. I spoke with eight local chefs, each with their own personal pizza-making style, about whether Santa Cruz County – an area saturated with more than 70 pizza-focused businesses – has its own pizza style. The answers were divided, and it was a fun exploration of the different ways local pizza makers put their own spin on this ubiquitous and beloved food. I included 13 pop-ups, parlors and restaurants that are shaping Santa Cruz’s pizza culture. Don’t miss it!
… Sadly, Rustico Italian Street Food has closed its location on Locust Street in downtown Santa Cruz after a little under six months. I was a fan of pizzaiolo Francesco Ramunno’s Roman-style pies, especially the zucchina, a white pie piled with shaved zucchini and finished with creamy stracciatella cheese. I’ll also miss the arancino, one of my favorite non-pizza dishes that I wrote about last week.
Rammuno plans to offer his menu through online delivery services like DoorDash, and may reopen as a pop-up or catering service, but plans are still TBD, he said in an Instagram post over the weekend.
… Struggling to manage a glut of tomatoes (lucky you), or just want to save a bit of this warm season? Learn how to can tomatoes in glass jars by boiling them in hot water at Mountain Feed & Farm Supply in Ben Lomond this Saturday. Tickets to the Water Bath Canning Tomatoes Class are $40.
If you feed a sourdough starter, have a garden or enjoy making sauerkraut, your new homesteading hobby obsession may be water bath canning. At least, it was for me. After tomatoes, it was an easy segue into jams, hot sauces and chutneys. When jewel-colored Mason jars threatened to overwhelm my pantry a few months later, I discovered that my creations made excellent holiday gifts – just FYI.
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Harvest time for the Santa Cruz Mountains wine industry is getting closer, and viticulturist Prudy Foxx told Lookout wine columnist Laurie Love that it’s shaping up to be a “sensuous” year. Love also shares her experience judging for the Santa Cruz County Fair Amateur Wine Competition ahead of the festivities on Sept. 11-15, and shares local wineries with standout sustainable farming practices in the 2025 edition of the Slow Wine Guide, an extension of Slow Food USA. Read her latest column here.
NOTED
I’m on vacation this week, so there’s no Eaters Digest this Friday. I’ll be back with my Tuesday newsletter, Lily Belli on Food, on Sept. 10.
EVENT SPOTLIGHT
Support the Center for Farmworker Families, a Watsonville-based nonprofit, and enjoy an evening at the farm at Harvesting Hope: Farm-to-Fork Fundraiser on Saturday, Oct. 5, at Mariquita Farm in Watsonville. Proceeds from this event fund education, advocacy and essential supplies and services for local farmworkers and their families. The evening includes an organic, plant-based four-course meal prepared by chefs Maria Gonzalez and Emily Beggs, nonalcoholic beverages, a farm tour and talks by Ann López, the organization’s director, and Adam Bolaños Scow, leader of the Campaign for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture. Tickets are $135.
LIFE WITH THE BELLIS
My family and I went to the beach on Labor Day and ran into at least 10 other families we know, all with the same idea. As we splashed around with the little kids, we all kept saying how excited we are that “secret summer” – essentially the month of September, after the tourist frenzy dies down and the warmest, summeriest weather actually arrives on the Central Coast – is finally here.
I agree, except that I can’t help but feel the pull toward cozy autumn dishes. With the temperature in the 80s, I want to turn on my oven about as much as I want to wear a sweater, yet I find myself dog-earing pages in my fall magazines for pork chops with apples, beef stew and roasted vegetables, and tomato soup with garam masala. Physically, I’m still sweating over the grill in my backyard, but mentally I’ve transitioned to the slowly simmering comfort foods of fall.
FOOD NEWS WORTH READING
➤ Beloved national cooking figure Ina Garten’s nearly 50-year career is chronicled in a profile in The New Yorker magazine, in which the writer spends a long weekend dining out, cooking with and getting a peek behind the curtain at America’s hostess with the mostest. (The New Yorker)
➤ People who enjoy dining out by themselves, are, in fact, not alone. Solo dining reservations have risen 29% over the past two years in the U.S., and the numbers are up in parts of Europe and Japan as well. Restaurants are adjusting their seating in response. (NBC Bay Area)